Last month I talked about Pub-it by Barnes and Nobel, a program that allowed writers to publish their books to the Barnes and Nobel electric store. Today, I will talk about Blurb.com, a program that allows writers to create physical books to be purchased through Blurb.com's website. With these two sites, writers can publish their own books using both popular medians and get their name out in the process. The best part of it all, they're both free.

Blurb.com provides a software program called BookSmart that can be downloaded from the website. Through BookSmart, you can create your books using pre-designed layouts or by creating their own templates. Start by selecting the black/white (B/W) text option. This allows you to create 5x8 text books in hardcover and paperback. Copy and paste your manuscript into BookSmart and format as necessary. You can also add a cover and copyright page to create an authentic book. When finished, publish the book to Blurb.com. From there, start selling and promoting your book.

Here's how it works (direct from the website):

Enroll in the free Set Your Price program. It only takes a few minutes.

Decide how much profit you want to make per book. Let’s say you’ve just made a book for Young Adult readers. The base price for a softcover is $19.95, but you decide to charge $24.95 for it, making $5.00 profit on each book.